Don DeLillo...a disappointment?

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_-mTuzE8-xIs/SrBRd-oU9LI/AAAAAAAAAzw/sshwgGXajUI/s400/whitenoise-front-cover.jpg

nice cover.
i haven't quite finished because i got distracted but am loving the new yorker story from a couple of weeks ago.

Like it. Four kids in the back though - is that right?

I really liked "Point Omega."
Anyone else read it yet?

that cover is some terrible twee-ass bullshit

Someone at Penguin design is causing havoc. Check out the one for Wuthering Heights.

i seem to be starting to reread 'underworld'—i'm not sure how far i'll get. but since it's been a long time since i first read it, i've been exposed to all sorts of other things in the meantime that help me to better understand what i'm reading. or, help me better understand things that i was able to perceive the first time through.

alfred's remark above about delillo as an essayist creating novelistic materials strikes me as off base. i think because it ignores the point of delillo's prose style (including paragraph-level stuff like scene-setting, interventions from the narratorial voice, free indirect style effects, and so on, but all the way down to the ways individual sentences can be formed). the effect i care about there is his way of putting into words the multi-aspected sense of self, and sense of what's going on around you (in the social, institutional, ritual world), that is probably part of what earns dlillo the praise / criticism of being 'antihumanist'.

that might come out more unequivocally in other books (maybe 'white noise', from what i recall from my one, even earlier read of it), but my sense is that two important, and certainly 'novelistic', further purposes this part of delillo's style serves are a) to express a kind of emersonian sense that the significance of ordinary life surpasses what we take it to be in our ordinary business of living—which is sometimes expressed in a very emersonian way by juxtaposing forms of description appropriate to the ordinary, everyday self, with forms appropriate to grand world-historical processes and concepts (which will make delillo look anti-humanist, in some moods);

and b) to do something like the same, but in a different register that pertains to threatening impersonal aspects of ordinary life that usually pertain to the historical state of society, development of technology and media and the role they play in our lives, etc. etc.

it seems like different ways of taking note of, or being aware of, or giving prominence to, these two aspects of how we see ourselves and the positions of our everyday lives in the greater sweep of life, are laid out pretty distinctly for the different characters in the 'pafko' sequence at the beginning. but not in the manner of an essay. they're each depicted in ways that are just as perceptible by readers as those of any novel.

i googled and found that tony tanner wrote a book called 'the american mystery: american literature from emerson to delillo'. anyone ever looked at it? is it any good?

relevant inasmuch as it touches on emerson:

Unlike his friend Paul Auster, there's no part of his creative make-up that owes much to the 19th-century American masters. "I was too much of a Bronx kid to read Emerson or Hawthorne." Instead, he listens to jazz: "Charlie Mingus, Miles Davis, the same music I listened to when I was 20."

there's an okay interview with delillo in today's observer. it's frustrating for cutting off just before the writer, delillo and paul auster head to carnegie deli to bullshit about typewriters, which sounds more interesting than standard q-and-a stuff.

I liked that, he talks seriously about complexity but comes across well. That usually makes writers seem like complete douches.

Not read a novel by DeLillo however I think the novel-essay has probably to some of the my favourite fiction that I've read in the last 18 months and Point Omega does look like its in that vein? Might chase that up.

i quite liked point omega but its very... delillo. obtuse and distant and kind of bullshitty but very smart. its only like 120 pages itll take you less than an afternoon. and yes it is very very essay like. it wouldnt be much of a stretch to call it a book length essay on douglas gordon's '24 hour psycho'

It's double-spaced as well! You wouldn't mind 112 pages of dense text (which to be fair it might be in the non-literal sense), but it does look like taking the piss a bit.

q:

does delillo's prose read as 'fast' or 'slow' to you?

Does anyone's?

Good question, possibly.

i googled and found that tony tanner wrote a book called 'the american mystery: american literature from emerson to delillo'. anyone ever looked at it? is it any good?

I read it (several years ago) and can't remember a huge amount about it, although he wasn't very complimentary about Underworld iirc.

A friend once wrote a paper in which he proposed first that Molly Bloom's monologue was fast; then, alternatively, that it was slow. Both seemed quite plausible.

“Slow films in which everyone gallops and
gesticulates; quick films in which people hardly move” - Robert Bresson

Rhythmically slow, if only because of my compulsion to narrate the next few hours of my day in his voice after I've read a section of his books - it seems slow in my head.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/sports/baseball/for-branca-an-asterisk-of-a-different-kind.html?hp

The Angel Esmerelda: Nine Stories

I found out by accident that this is out this week. I'm not sure I've ever read any short stuff by him, except Pafko At The Wall by default I suppose. I find him quite hard to imagine in short format, actually.

the recent new yorker one - midnight in dostoyevsky - is one of my fav things i've read in the magazine. & i like the harper's one also. am psyched to pick this up, though postponing to get the one w/the photographic (blue?) cover rather than the 'neat' new black illustrative edition thing.

is it that he's kinda...college-y? i'm trying to be tactful. its just strange how much i was into him in my 20s, and i mention on this thread that i want to go back and re-read, but in the end...i don't really want to. tactful, cuz there are younger people than me on here who might feel what i felt way back when. when i read his stuff. i'm sure i'd still like some of the books. or it could be that he just lost the plot and me circa underworld.

i also feel like critically he is no longer the BIG DEAL he was circa underworld. always feels strange to think of writers in rock band terms. people really wanted other people to know that cormac was the genius of the century back then too. not so much now. not that people don't still dig both of them, but they don't have that distant mystique that they once had. writing zombie books will do that to a guy.

woah, had no idea this thing existed! thanks y'all

is it that he's kinda...college-y? i'm trying to be tactful

Not sure if you're addressing the new book or the thread title, Scott, but I don't know if I'm picking you up right. I'm quite encouraged by the little I've been able to find out about this new collection, especially that a lot of it's older stuff, because it gives me hope that it'll be about real people in real situations rather than the literary theory side of the guy.

If that makes sense. By way of explanation I adore Underworld and Libra, but now maybe mostly for their treatment of domestic concerns - LHO's marriage, say, or the adultery or NY Italian sections in Underworld. The meta bits (I'm sure they're there) hold no interest for me; so eg White Noise, while wryly amusing and all, feels more like an exercise I don't need to be a part of.

Maybe that's the 'college-y' you're talking about? For me that sort of thing is a layer of meaning I don't need, I'm already working hard enough to follow the real story underneath. Writers who prioritise the metalayer and forget the other bit are the worst imo - DeLillo can do both ime so yeah, I'm intrigued by this new collection.

oh yeah i was just thinking of delillo in general. not the new collection.

see, i had no interest in libra, but i'm not a huge fan of fictionalized/alternate history fiction. and the same can be said about underworld. the original pafko intro turned me off so much when i read it that i didn't want to read the book. but i most definitely WAS inspired by his earlier stuff in a big way. i thought he was kinda brilliant! my tastes did change over time though. i don't really have anything BAD to say about him now. and i mention the rock band thing just cuz i was thinking about the earlier/better cliche and how unfair it can be. i dunno. i REALLY should pick up some of the old stuff and see how i feel about it.

i haven't liked anything that i've read post-underworld. i think that's more it than that he's college-y. i still love him, though. i should pick up some of the old stuff, i guess, though i don't want to find out i don't like him as much!

by "that's more it" i mean, i think it's more that he's kind of lost the plot a little.

hes kind of too serious now! i liked point omega but its not funny at all, and without the humor he ends up sounding sort of like a parody of himself

hes certainly not writing anything now that would win over skeptics

yeah i feel like his reputation has faded a bit. haven't read anything after underworld, tho maybe i read the body artist? don't remember much about it. funny scott mentions cormac. . . reading and loving suttree right now, though it's still early. and i finally finished blood meridian! loved it once i realized it was meant to be boring in the middle.

i think he writes/wrote amazing sentences, but they don't always add up to a novel that would sustain my interest anymore, i'd suspect. i should reread end zone, that book was kind of crazy!

yeah that's even true of underworld. i like that book more than a lot of people i think, but a lot of it was me getting mesmerized by it on a sentence level.

everything ive read except 'libra' seemed sorta conceptually empty and i get what scott means abt 'college-y'. i mean white noise is abt a college professor but i think the whole 'consumerism is the governing ideology of late 20th c. america/life is a meaningless charade ordered by ad jingles' is a p... undergraduate sentiment.

you're conceptually empty!

it's been a while since i've read white noise, but that's not what i took away from it.

like my favorite thing about delillo in endzone and white noise is that as seriously as he takes his craft and his ideas, he also doesnt take them seriously. and that ability to joke about himself got lost somewhere around, i dont know, mao ii? or underworld i guess (havent read it). like the main professor character in point omega is pretty similar to murray in white noise--but the guy is deadly serious instead of being a figure of fun

has anyone read 'amazons'

love the idea of outgrowing writers, tho. like you can read salinger's long/short stories after you graduate from college and you'll be okay, but don't try to re-read catcher in the rye* or it will destroy you forever.

* i realize that some people can re-read catcher with no problem, but i think you catch my drift.

parts of underworld are jokey but there is a sort of ponderousness to it, i see what you mean

haha book threads exist just to piss me off i will have you know i reread catcher last year and it destroyed me. maybe i'm a case of arrested development.

'amazons' is p fun iirc

ooo i want to read amazons. how would one read it though? it's long out of print, right?

i think it's weird to pin the idea of him being less appealing somehow on his moment having faded; i know there was def a time when he was v zeitgeisty - there is that quote where he's talking about the fading relevance of linear narratives, which i'm sure he wasn't alone in recognising, or nec a pioneer of but which he does sorta epitomise, i think - but i feel like the change in context for readers can just make the books a different thing, portraying the beginning of an era rather than capturing the present moment.

i think i get the idea that he's college-y because there's a looseness to those early novels that is very invested in the poetry of how everything fits together, flitting between the beauty of the language to the new, cold landscape he's drawing. & maybe you have to 'buy into' that, have romantic faith in it the way you do at 20.

& idk, i like those last few novels, though i guess they're operating within his parameters, yeah, & the digressions of point omega aren't as shocking or absorbing as the earlier novels. but then we're onto some joseph heller shit about not transcending a framework that you drew the lines of.

xp, this is true, about the humourlessness, but i feel like that's more a thing of the austerity & anomie of the newer books, and the hyperactivity of white noise, &c. he's almost like love & death era woody allen in that, providing an additional sheen of absurdity to the very thing he's discussing.

i reread catcher last year and it destroyed me.

that's why i added the disclaimer--i bet you could read any book at the right time and place for you to read the book and it would wipe you out.

re amazons: think i bought the paperback off amazon p cheaply but a while ago. then lent it to someone & never got it back :\

okay but i also want to make the point that you are rong about catcher in the rye >:[

oh yah never mind you can get it on amazon.

okay but i also want to make the point that you are rong about catcher in the rye >:[

we're just talking about tastes here though! both of us are right, both of us are rong, even tho you are rong.

it's been a while since i've read white noise, but that's not what i took away from it.

yeah i cld be mistaken, or reading things that max is taking as lighthearted to be moralizing, i just strongly remember the whole 'here they are right back at the supermarket' stuff as being really hectoring/overbearing and theres lots of good writing in white noise

xps - haha naw i like salinger a lot

i love salinger! just don't think catcher would "resonate" with me like it once did